


Empty

by indiachick



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Community: ohsam, Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt Sam Winchester, Magical Realism, Offscreen Implied Character Death, The Empty, Weird fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-08-12 23:51:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7953940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indiachick/pseuds/indiachick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam looks for Dean in the Empty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Empty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crowroad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowroad/gifts).



> This was written for an ohsam comment meme, sometime in the beginning of 2016, for crowroad3's prompt: troubled waters.

You cast the net into the black and wait.

It haloes when it hits the water, cold white light coruscating along the tinsel spreads of rope, and luminescent water splashes against your palms. You think of clowns and glitter, and how your heart beat then, and wonder if that is a measurable fear against the fear of this, the fear of now. You don’t dare look at the sky—flat and depthless and full of bright, cold, dark-future predicting stars. You keep your eyes on the sea—flat and depthless, and full of bright, cold life.

Your feet are bare against the bottom of the boat, and so, so cold. When you look down at them through the glistering water they appear strange, impersonal, a lattice of flesh and space for the water to seep through. The water sparkles everywhere—your hands, your nails, your fingers all twinkle. She laughs at you from the captain’s cabin and revs the motor warningly.

_Haul it in,_ she says. _What are you waiting for?_

Your fingers drag wet against the net, freezing, tangled and strained by the haul of the waves. You pull it, and something glowing and heavy comes with it, thrashing like fish against your boat, spraying water. It squeals, smacking against the sides, nearly upsetting your balance. You grab the side of the boat to stay aboard, close your eyes in terror and try not to think of the comfort of letting go. The rocking of the boat is the rocking of the sea, the rocking of the dark and wet and the womb. You hold onto the turquoise-painted wood and keep the seine net wrapped in your fingers and taste blood in your mouth from holding in your fright.

Billie is a dark shape in the cabin, black-specked against bright light. She looks on curiously as your fingers reach for the heavy, glowing thing, learning it, listening to its soft thrumming language against your fingertips. The steep sea breaks foam in a myriad of diamonds at your back. You choke down hope and learn the soul with your fingers and the whisperings of old cars and No-Tell motels and gunpowder nearly does you in. But then the soul whispers of beards and airplanes and Tokyo, of Madison Street and money and charity auctions, and Billie laughs derisively and turns the boat around so quickly that the glowing soul flies out of your hand and back into the troubled waters.

*

The unreal shore shines weak in the light of an unreal sun. You weave your way among other strangers looking for boats and lovers, feet bare on crusty sand, watching the black waves come in. There is no horizon; only the luminescent darkness of the Empty, stretching as far as the eye can see and then upward, curving, the sky-dome churning with waves. The boats are long and slim and bright, painted pagan colors for the sake of superstition. The harbor rattles and groans under the assault of the sea, an enormous sound.

Billie follows you sometimes, in the mornings, watching you. You don’t do much. Sometimes you help someone looking for a wife or a daughter, your fingers surer at shipwright from mending guns and cars. Sometimes you whittle and caulk till your fingers bleed. Sometimes you fix the worthless tinsel of somebody’s net, and when they cry tearlessly into your chest you feel the cold from their dead fingers in your heart like claws.

There are creamy butterflies on the shore, and the weight of them when they alight on your shoulders are too much to bear. You sleep in the sand and the water crashes over you and drowns you, again and again.

Sometimes over the waves you hear Billie, reading Sandman aloud. You don’t know who you like better—Death or Delirium—but you do like her voice.

Sometimes you let time slip sideways and stand at the breakwaters. You write your brother’s name in the sand and watch the sea swallow up the message.

Billie says, every night, _move on_. _There’s nothing for you here, Sam. This is a foolish place built on foolish hope._ A gray afterlife. The Fields of Asphodel with boats instead of flowers. Out in the dark in the Empty Sea, you sometimes calculate the probabilities of finding one soul amongst thousands. It’s not a promising number. But you still cast the net; let the water sink freezing teeth in your skin and soul. You let it break the anchor-line of your boat, snap the stern, snatch away the bitts and mortises.

The ropes of the net drink blood from your palms and fill the welts with salt.

And again and again, you haul in whispering souls, searching for your brother, for an absurd conclusion to an already absurd story.

You promised to look, this time.

You have forever.

 

    

 


End file.
